I think MS should change it up next Windows release and make it the Magenta or Burnt Sienna Screen of Death.

At the least it was Mr. Potato Head! not Steve Balmer (who actually looks like one!)
BSOD's are one of those things, that are funny to the viewer not the user!
Good one though! Keep Sharing.

I'm no photographer, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but how does turning a flash off make a picture blurry? Isn't that what focus is for?

I love how Mr. Potato head looks like hes rolling his eyes.

"Not again!" indeed Mr. Potato head.

@Geisrud: I think he meant the flash washed out the computer screen so you couldn't see the BSOD.

@Geisrud: longer exposure, more shake.

I think that is Mrs. Potato head.

@Geisrud: intro to photography 101: without flash there is less light, requiring longer exposure, during which hand-held cameras can experience shake that can appear similar to out of focus shot.

This is probably the most popular feature of Windows.

Mr. Potato is running OS X, and that kid seems to be content.

what i still find funny, even to this day, is that ill be playing Company of Heroes on my PC while my buddy on a Mac wont be.

That is the post-modern "Potato of Gender".

@Geisrud: Photography 101. When you take photos of an anything, the most important thing is light!. A flash is used to compensate for the lack of light, which in turn helps the aperture (in non technical terms, the "hole" through which light passes on to the exposure media (CMOS sensor, or film) of the camera to make adjustments so that the captured image is sharp, and if its a point & shoot camera, then in focus. Now, when the ambient light is low, yet you have an object that might bounce back light from flash, and you choose to turn the flash off, you will have to give a longer exposure time (indicated by f-stops) for the camera to compensate for the lack of light, so that i can adjust the aperture and focus to capture a good image....which usually ends up a little blurry (without a tripod!), due to body movement....unless you have a very stable hands....Hope this helps.

She's got kind of a "whoopsie-daisy" look on her face. Her annoyed/frustrated face must still be stored in her caboose.

@Geisrud: looks like you, sir, just got served! Served knowledge! Hell, so did I.

Must have been a carbohydrate overflow error...

The black screen of death multiplied my millions of dead screens would help to reduce global warming, no doubt.

@lankysob: @nightsky: @Fierock: @TheConstantGardner:
Thanks all. Like I said, I'm no photographer.
@MisterSleep: I asked for it.

I know a cure for MS... just before showing a BSOD, just take a snapshot of the user screen and show it on the screen. No more BSOD! See that is using my ass, I mean head.

@Geisrud: true, and I'm glad it was delivered. Ya learn something new every day! That was my new thing, and now I'm going back to bed.

entry fee to WDW: 120 bucks
entries to Cirque du Soleil : 80 bucks
be at the right time to see a BSOD at WDW: priceless

Mrs. Potatohead came into the Disney empire through the Pixar door (courtesy of Toy Story 2), right? Who sold Pixar to Disney, anyone remember? (I know some people like to think Jobs founded Pixar, but I think he actually just bought a little baby Pixar from Lucas). That makes this the perfect story -- Apple fanboys can revel in the BSOD, PC apologists can savor the irony that Apple cousin-inspired character was running windows instead of OSX. Equal opportunity hate for all.

I'd have thought disney would be using mac's seing as steve's their biggest shareholder.

Or even better, just have the OS reboot/shut-down the PC automatically and kick the error message to a txt file that you can examine when the reboot is done.

See how simple that is?

@TheConstantGardner:
Sorry to be a camera snob, but the f-number indicate the size of the aperture, not the exposure time (though the size does affect how long the exposure has to be). Exposure time is just time - seconds, minutes, hours, etc.

The other people have the gist of it in much simpler terms: Less light (no flash) --> longer exposure required, longer exposure --> higher likelihood of camera shake (motion blur)

"Reeks of Disney Magic "

It definatly reeks of something.

@Out2gtcha:
may have helped my cred to spell definitely right....

The saddest part is how the person who submitted the story is so blase about computers crashing, like it's acceptable for airline schedulers or banking systems to just go tits up whenever they feel like it. I guess that's what a lifetime of using a substandard OS will do to a person.

Thats funny. I was there in January and it was doing the same thing!

Arrgh, why are they even using Windows at all for something like this.. :(

@bignaz2k: Thanks for the correction, it wasinadvertent. But like the original commenter said, he knew very less about Photography! and knowing that you really are a "snob" even if you post a disclaimer at the beginning, my post was written in haste and for people to understand in "simpler terms", I made an effort not to throw in "Jargon" which people mostly do! (Assuming that everyone is on the same page!, which mostly isn't true!).
At the same time, sadly though, it seems like more words you use to explain something to average people, it is considered "Blasphemy" these days....SMS Generation!, beginning of the end of english language and art of conversation, as we know it! HYGMP.

@Noobs-R-Us: The problem with saving the BSOD info to a file is that the cause could be the storage device.....then where does it go (other than /dev/null). The BSOD drops to pure text mode on the video to display it so that it will almost always be displayed.

So I'm really confused....

To all the people using Windows XP with at least service pack 1, do you EVER get BSOD? I haven't seen it since the original release of XP.... Maybe even Windows 95. Whoever is selling these crap-a-tronic pcs to disney et all, is a genius.

@JymmyZ: So what's a "better than standard" machine then? My Macbook Kernal Panics every time I try to create a Bootcamp partition, and then the space I allocated seems to vanish so I'm kinda baffled. This is OSX's built in stuff and it happens... does that make OSX also substandard?

Being a computer tech i would have L.M.A.O. at this one and it probably would have made my trip. I find it overly amusing to see BSOD in places they shouldn't be. Sadly i remember seeing a BSOD on a flight update boards at the airport. no one could figure out why i was chuckling.

B.T.W. Most BSOD have information about what caused the OS to crash. If i recall properly. In Windows vista the major cause for Blue Screens is nVidia Drivers.

Microsoft should make the standard desktop look like the BSOD so nobody knows when there's a problem.

>>I'm no photographer, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but how does turning a flash off make a picture blurry? Isn't that what focus is for?<<

Since the flash adds light, turning it off requires a longer exposure to get extra light into the camera, and longer exposures usually result in motion blur when the photographer tries to hold the camera still. Faster shutter speed = less chance of motion blur. Slower shutter speed = more chance of motion blur.

Exception at memory location 0x00857POTATO93

Ok, the really freaky part about this is that I was at this place - it's in Downtown Disney, and is the Disney Toy Store (can't remember the exact name).

I was just there with my daughter on Monday of this week. The Lego Store is *not* to be missed :D